An error occurred: The key provided is invalid. Activation keys must consist of at least 5 groups of letters and digits

An error occurred: The key provided is invalid. Activation keys must consist of at least 5 groups of letters and digits

Symptoms

When activating Dashboard Server you see the following message:

"An error occurred: The key provided is invalid. Activation keys must consist of at least 5 groups of letters and digits"

There are two kinds of license key format. The old and the new license key format.

New format:

Dashboard Server license keys have a text prefix followed by 5 groups of letters and numbers:

type-prefix-aaaaa-bbbbb-ccccc-ddddd-eeeee

For example:

SQUP-PRIMARY-abc12-def34-ghi56-78jkl-90mno

Old format:

Dashboard Server license keys contain of 5 groups of 5 letters/numbers:

aaaaa-bbbbb-ccccc-ddddd-eeeee

Dashboard Server v4.1 and above accepts both the new prefixed license key and the old style without the prefix.

Dashboard Server v4.0 and below only accepts the old style license key. Remove the prefix from the license key to leave just 5 groups.

For example, remove SQUP-PRIMARY- to leave just aaaaa-bbbbb-ccccc-ddddd-eeeee.